In the digital world, the perception about you will be based on the information people find about you, online. Since people tend to spend a lot of time on social media, it is natural for them to draw their first impression about you based on what the Facebooks and Twitters of the world are telling them. If you do not put up the information about yourself, someone else will. If someone else does, you lose control over what they project about you or your Clinic.

So being indifferent to social media will not work. You need to accept them in the fold of your marketing plan, and then control the flow of information on it, so that the right image about you and your Clinic can be projected to those searching online.

Think of each social media platform as a unique distributor of your content. Just as a distributor can widen the reach of a product to a geographical location, similarly social media can widen the reach of your content to different patient demographics.

 

The common checklist you need to complete right away

1. Open an account with the Big 3. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter
   Pick up a username to use for creating your profiles. It is usually a good idea to use the website name or the clinic name. Example: If your website is www.drguptasskinclinic.com, try to get a username as drguptasskinclinic as well. Do not go for usernames that have letters or numbers in them.Don’t do this
   Drguptasskinclinic12
   drguptas1skinclinic
   It looks cheesy, contrived and kills credibility.Do this
   If you really need to get a unique name, use an underscore ie
   drguptas_skin_clinic

 

2. Do not just fill up your profile. Complete every bit of it. Include your clinic logo (use a professional logo) and also upload some pictures of yourself and the Clinic. Usually, the content that each social media site requires, has a lot of overlap. So save the answers you write for one profile, in a Microsoft Word document and reuse them for the other sites. No need to be creative here. Just copy-paste from one to the other.

 

3. Open up a free account with Hootsuite i.e. hootsuite.com and link up all your 3 accounts to Hootsuite. Another good one is buffer.com It is very easy. From thereon you only need to log into the software to post your messages across all your social media platforms in 1 go. The software will in turn push your messages on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter etc.

 

 

Understand that Content is King

People primarily come to social media to connect with others. They are not there to buy anything. Understanding this is important, as it implies that direct selling does not work on social media. One cannot connect with a salesman, however, one can connect with a teacher. Be that teacher, educate.

1. What does your clinic stand for?
   Examples:
   We make you look younger – Aesthetic Clinic
   Best care for Diabetes, By Expert Diabetologists – Specialist Diabetes Clinic
   Say goodbye to baldness – Trichology Clinic

 

2. Your Post should be framed to demonstrate a visible benefit to the visitor. Only then is there a likelihood that the readers will promote it, amongst their friends. Let me give an example,
   Average Post:
   “Check out our new Healthy Heart Program. Complete cardio checkup for just 1,999/-”
   Average Post made Great:
   “Want to live long enough to see your grandkids get married? Book yourself to our Healthy Hearts Program for just 1,999/-.” 
3. Just for Twitter remember to use # with the keywords in your comment. Hashtags or # make your text searchable for other users.
   Don’t do this:
   Healthy Heart Clinic launches a 360-degree program for Hypertension
   Do this:
   Healthy Heart Clinic launches a 360-degree #wellness #program for #Hypertension.
   Now if any user on Twitter searches for physicians or care plans for hypertension, your tweet will appear in the search result.

4. Appeal to the baser human instinct.
   Who does one yearn to connect to?
   Something or someone who is suave, cool, who you want to be associated with.  Highlight where your clinic is a differentiator, where you are investing in staff training programs or putting on innovative laser equipment, or how you have slashed waiting times at your clinic. If you have done something different which makes you stand out, as little as it may, make it count. Write about it. Others will have an incentive to share your story as it is something unique, and different. It can have the 130x effect (An average person on Facebook has 130 friends. If you post something interesting enough, it can get shared by each person to 130 others)

 

5. Share research papers, citations, conferences you are attending, seminars you are speaking at, and any academic project you are involved in. It is important to establish yourself as a credible source of information. You need to occupy the space of an expert in the patient’s mind.

 

6. Promote any weekend seminars or free checkups that your Clinic may conduct.

 

7. Offer promotions, and discounts on health and wellness programs here.

 

 

You can use social media for disseminating information and spreading awareness about your Clinic and its services. And you can measure the effectiveness of your social media initiative by checking whether it increases traffic to your website. This bit can be done via Google Analytics and has been covered in the chapter on Websites.

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